THE Shroud of Turin has been reproduced by an Italian scientist in another attempt to prove that the cloth allegedly bearing an image of Christ’s face is a fake.
Some old geezer's face on the Shroud of Turin
The BBC reports that Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, said he had used materials and techniques that were available in the Middle Ages.
These included applying pigment to cloth and then heating it in an oven.
Tests 20 years ago dated the fabric to between 1260 and 1390, but believers say it is an authentic image of Christ.
The linen cloth, measuring about 4.4m by 1.1m (14.4ft by 3.6ft), holds the concealed image of a man bearing all the signs of crucifixion, including blood stains.
Tests in 1988 have been repeatedly challenged, and scientists remain unsure how the image came to be on the cloth.
Garlaschelli, who is due to present his findings to a conference on the paranormal at the weekend, said many people believed that the shroud
Has unexplainable characteristics that cannot be reproduced by human means.
But, he added:
The result obtained clearly indicates that this could be done with the use of inexpensive materials and with a quite simple procedure.
Garlaschelli, funded by a group of Italian atheists and agnostics, reproduced the shroud by placing a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbing it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.
The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it.
This removed the pigment from the surface but left a half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud.
Blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains were then added to achieve the final effect.
Garlaschelli said he expected people to challenge his research.
If they don’t want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world’s best laboratories they certainly won’t believe me.
The Shroud is kept in Turin Cathedral and is rarely displayed in public.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 6th, 2009 at 9:46 am
There could be an opportunity here to make Turin shrouds and sell them to the gullible; rather like the arboretum of wood fragments that are supposed to be from the cross upon which they nailed old jebus.
Seriously, no matter how much verifiable evidence is presented to the religious, they still stick fingers in ears and shout la la la…..
October 6th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Co-incidence – I discovered a few weeks ago that the Shroud was used to clone Prince William who will bring us Hell on Earth in 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....M&fe...
October 6th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I think his explanation is wrong.
Shroud of Turin = Found Our Hirst!
October 6th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I'm all for establishing the truth/falsity of relics, as presumably were the clergy that gave permission for the shroud to be carbon dated (don't think they couldn't have played the "it's too important to cut pieces off it" argument indefinitely). It's not going to upset me if the shroud turns out to be a fake.
That said, in the interests of accuracy…
"If they don’t want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world’s best laboratories they certainly
won’t believe me."
There are quite a few doubts regarding the radio carbon dating…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....s/religi...
Also, this thing about wood fragments from the true cross. I have no doubt some of them are fake and no way to prove that they are not all fake. Maybe they are all real but somebody got the wrong cross! But I do know this:
In 1870, Rohault de Fleury published "Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion" in which he attempted to catalog all of the known fragments. The author determined that, at that time, if all of the relic pieces were put together, they would not even amount to one-third of the Cross which is said to have stood four meters in height, with a traverse branch of two meters. The author further claims that upon "A microscopic examination of the fragments of the Cross, scattered through the world in the form of relics, reveals the fact that it was made from a pine tree."
So can we stop repeating the stale old myth about "enough wood fragments to build a ship" and just stick to "it's wood, it could have come from anywhere"
Ta
October 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
It is a fact that the original 1988 carbon dating was flawed because the sample taken was not from the main sheet; the sample used was from a medieval repair hence the carbon dating of that period. The shroud is not a medieval fake but older still, and is just a sheet of linen with the image of a face; there is no provenance or evidence to suggest the shroud was used on any particular individual from history or mythology. Have a look here <a href="http://www.shroudofturin4journalists.com/Shroud-o…” target=”_blank”>http://www.shroudofturin4journalists.com/Shroud-o…
I agree the cross wood could have come from anywhere; there are various claims of pine [many species] and olive wood.
October 6th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Yes fair points, I'm not sure it's a good idea to have this sort of research funded by atheists as it only invites the credulous to dismiss it without consideration. The shroud has a good claim to be the top dog in the world of anomalous phenomena, it fits all the criteria in that no one seems able to pin down anything specific about it, the results are constantly open to question. From this the religious conclude, on no good evidence, that it is the genuine image of jesus, which raises as many questions as it purports to answer. I think we should just accept it as part of the weird stuff that seems to exist around the fringes of human belief, like visions and weeping statues. As none of it is replicable or open to proper scientific enquiry there is no reason to suppose it tells us anything about the truth or otherwise of the resurrection.
October 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Yes there are all sorts of theories about where the shroud was before Turin, several involving the Templars ( yawn ) that's assuming of course it was anywhere, there is no hard evidence that it is pre-medieval. Suppose for the sake of argument ii did turn out to be 1st. century and middle eastern and suppose further that it could be shown that it is an image of a crucified man made through contact with his body. What does that say about the resurrection, nothing. You either believe in this as a matter of faith or reject it as a physical impossibility allied to an unverifiable story ( my take ). To imagine that it confirms the truth of the Christian faith is to believe, to paraphrase a former Archbishop of York, in a conjuring trick with bones and cloth.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
IKEA sells one Leonardo da Vinci's homo universalis; maybe they can add the shroud to their collection.
October 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
As an artist, I've always had my reservations about this image and that material. So, IvanS, let's not just put it down to one of those things… One thing that strikes me is that ANY fabric that old would be so intact, regardless of the "fragile state" it's said to be in. And documentaries I've seen, show it be really quite strong. (And no yawning now!) Leonardo di ser Piero is still the culprit of my thesis, he was and is a very entertaining man. And knowing that alchemy in the middle east flowed to the west 400 years before his time, like agriculture, all you need is the right sort of materials to make a FAKE, and he had the means, the MO and living practically next door, the geographic position. And where is the mention of the frightening proportions of the image on the material? That's one horribly deformed man who died on that 4×2 cross, I tell ya! Where in the Bibble(TM) does it say 'Saith the Lord, Jesus Christ is deformed. Amen.' And finally, scientists would argue black is white if it got their puss in a paper, so when you say science is still arguing about the dates… I feel I have to point out that that's what they do for a living! It's an old hoax, nothing more – nothing less. And I, for one, am still laughing.
October 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't a fake only that it's rather difficult to actually prove it, comes under the heading of proving a negative. As we know the provenance of art works is often dubious and faking and mis-attribution probably more common than we'd like to think. I can easily imagine the believers repost to your deformed man comment, "what do you expect after a crucifixion ?" I doubt if there will ever be a definitive answer to what it is or how it was made, anyone who takes an interest in anomalous phenomena will know the pattern, it's what makes them interesting and often entertaining but deducing cosmic significance from such things is something else altogether. That's why I don't think there's a lot of point in conducting experiments on the shroud, it's an exercise in futility really.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
There is a theory that this could be the face (but not the body) of jesus (see The Divine Deception by Keith Laidler). If it is the likeness of jesus made in medieval times then he didn't ascent into heaven and x'ianity is based on a lie.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Even supposing the shroud was genuine what does that prove? Who the hell cares?
October 6th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
While it's a bit ominous having research of this nature "funded by atheists and agnostics", the good thing about science is that its claims are testable and repeatable. Those who doubt the findings of these researchers can repeat the experiment and check the results for themselves.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
There is another more plausible scientific explanation, which answers all of the questions about right and left reversal, the photographic negative and the high concentrations of iron oxide thought to be paint pigment used in the middle-ages. The scientific experiments carried out over the past 12 months in a Califonia University will be published soon and will satisfy both the believers and the non-believers. PDNA
October 6th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Are commentators on this site unaware that the painter of the shroud confessed his role in the hoax to bishop Henri de Poiters in 1389, and the bishop forwarded the confession to the current pope? For the full facts, see Joe Nickell's Inquest on the Shroud of Turin, and Walter McCrone's Judgment Day For the Shroud of Turin. As for the claims that the carbon dating was unreliable, while not all are as imbecilic as Geoffrey Ashe's masturbation fantasy that radioactivity from Jesus' resurrection falsified the results, they are all equally desperate attempts to prove that black is white.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I do not claim the carbon dating unreliable but just that the wrong sample was dated. I should have said the linen cloth itself is older than 14th century. Forgers of paintings are known to use old material in an attempt to hide the real age of their work. I have not read McCrones work – thank you for the tip.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:51 am
"It is a fact that the original 1988 carbon dating was flawed because the sample taken was not from the main sheet"
Not according to this site:
http://www.freeinquiry.com/ske.....d/articl...
"…only after one month of careful study on where to cut the linen samples for dating were the samples removed from the Shroud. This process was observed personally by Mons. Dardozzi (Vatican Academy of Science), Prof. Testore (Turin University professor of textile technology), Prof. Vial (Director of the Lyon Ancient Textiles Museum), Profs. Hall and Hedges (heads of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory) and Prof. Tite (head of the British Museum research laboratory). There is no way these scientists and scholars could have made such an error and failed to see that the cloth samples they removed was really from a patch, "invisibly" rewoven or not."
October 7th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I have just read that and it's very interesting, it's a long time since I took any real interest in the shroud so I wasn't up with all the evidence. Thanks for that.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I will be very interested to see that, how exactly both believers and non-believers could be satisfied is a deep mystery in itself !
October 7th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Do devout believers not read teh gospel? There it clearly states that the body of Jesus was wrapped in two separate pieces of cloth. But then, you can tell it's a fake – you only have to look at the face on the "shroud" which has the wrong proportions for a real human face
October 7th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
In a way quedula's rather bizarre comment is not so far from the truth here. It doesn't really matter to the faithful whether these relics are genuine or not! If you doubt me just go to http://www.catholic.com and look up "relics". Here you will find an article on the Turin Shroud, as well as answers to questions which will put your mind in a spin. You will either have to suspend disbelief completely, or sit in the fridge while reading them, to avoid the unfortunate effect of your brain overheating to a dangerous level! The mental gymnastics which these religiots perform to get out of tight corners are totally beyond belief!!
October 8th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I assume "relics" includes a certain former Hitler youth member; his brain is pretty much dead isn't it?
October 8th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I assume "relics" includes a certain former Hitler youth member; his brain is pretty much dead anyway, isn't it?
October 8th, 2009 at 8:48 am
You don't need a brain to be a faithful Catholic, Angela. Someone (allegedly!) asks a question about the process by which Enoch, Elijah, Mary and others are supposed to have been taken up to heaven. The "expert" goes into lengthy analysis of scripture and papal pronouncements on the subject, before winding up his argument by saying: "But God can do what He wants" (I'm not kidding!). Well, why debate the topic at all then? If there's no logic to any of it, then the search for logic is futile!!
October 8th, 2009 at 8:53 am
One of them has a sense of humour, though. He calls his piece: "Assumptions about Mary" – I had to laugh at that one!
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December 18th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Now assume for a moment I was the richest woman on this planet
with a 100 billion dollars at my disposal, and I offered it up to
all of you pundits ( Atheist , Evolutionists, Muslims ) as a challenge
to reproduce this shroud, would you be able to do so ??????????
not in a million years, even if your life depended on it. The fact is
this peace of cloth simply terrifies you cos it pulls the rug from right under your feet. It basically mocks your very belief systems.